Cliff Richard and The Shadows
L'actu déborde, je pourrais écrire des articles à la pelle tous les jours. Je vous propose ci-dessous deux textes (que je résume à ma sauce) de presse dont celui du TELEGRAPH où les louanges et les termes dithyrambiques fleurissent pour Cliff et les Shadows en pleine tournée. Si Hank Marvin joue de façon toujours remarquable, Cliff en est bien la STAR. Sa voix reste entière, douce, pure, mélodieuse, hard pour le rock. Il excelle dans tous les styles, cela reste sa grande force. A 68 ans, Cliff interprète "The Young Ones" sans ironie ou sans émotion triste. Il donne aux fans le spectacle qu'ils désirent vraiment: mélodieux, entraînant, nostalgique, gai et ce, avec Charme et Charisme.
Cliff et les Shadows étaient au départ un groupe de rock and roll. Ils l'ont prouvé encore maintenant. Ils en restent les derniers purs pionniers. Ils ne font pas leur âge (sauf peut-être le batteur Bryan Bennett toujours aussi bon). Les Shadows jouent magnifiquement bien leurs instrumentaux de façon moderne.
Un show FANTASTIQUE!
CLIFF reste SIMPLY THE BEST
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Published: September 30 2009 03:00 | Last updated: September 30 2009 03:00
"People forget that we were a rock 'n' roll band. And we still are," Cliff Richard said. Then he laughed manically and bit the head off a bat.
OK, that last bit isn't true. In fact, he and The Shadows struck up "Nine Times Out of Ten", an Elvis- influenced rocker from 1960. Hank Marvin played an adroit guitar solo. Sir Cliff, the first British pop star to be knighted, gamely shimmied and sashayed. It was rock 'n' roll filtered through the sedate traditions of British light entertainment.
Although once condemned in the music press for his "violent hip-swinging exhibitionism" ("Is this new boy singer too sexy for Britain?" an NME article fretted), Blighty's answer to Presley was an unconvincing rock 'n' roll animal. Instead, Cliff and The Shadows, who are back together on a 50th anniversary reunion tour, were all about cheerful songs and rationed escapism: "We're all going on a summer holiday/No more work for a week or two."
It left Richard with a lightweight reputation that rankles to this day, judging from his attempt a few months ago to portray himself as "the most radical rock 'n' roll singer that Britain has ever seen", as he didn't "spit or swear or sleep around".
Unsurprisingly, their show was not in the slightest bit radical, but it did command respect. Initially sporting the trademark pink jacket of his youth, the 68-year-old singer was as smooth-voiced as ever, slipping easily into the role of romantic lead in songs such as "Gee Whiz It's You" and "Lucky Lips". His compulsive patter about hits and number ones grew tiresome ("Then EMI had this fantastic idea . . ."), but he performed with the zeal of a man intent on a record-breaking seventh consecutive decade of chart success.
The 67-year-old Hank Marvin, an inspiration to almost every British guitarist of note in the 1960s, led The Shadows like a maestro. Instrumentals such as "Apache" and "Atlantis" were a masterclass in dreamy vibrato, twanging western rock and Hawaiian exotica. Neither his and The Shadows' synchronised movements nor Cliff's wiggling dance steps were quite the stuff of arena entertainment, yet it was enough to see the fountainhead of British rock 'n' roll in good health and on good form.
Cliff Richard at the O2 Arena, review
Cliff Richard and The Shadows put on a fantastic but irony-free show at the O2 Arena. Rating * * *
By Neil McCormick
Published: 9:57AM BST 29 Sep 2009
Singalong nostalgia: Cliff Richard Photo: GETTY
The new BBC wildlife series Last Chance To See introduces viewers to some of the world’s most endangered species. Perhaps they should train their cameras on Cliff Richard and The Shadows, whose 50th anniversary tour is billed with joking finality as “reunited for the very last time”.
I wonder if they decided this will be their last lucrative stroll through their back catalogue out of concern for their increasingly creaky audience. It can’t be out of fear for their own mortality.
Of the original rock and rollers, they are almost last men standing, but they don’t look like they’re about to fall over any time soon.
Slender, fit and healthy — Sir Cliff and his musical adjutant Hank Marvin must be harbouring Dorian Gray portraits in their attic. Maybe they look like drummer Brian Bennet, with receding white hair and a conspicuous belly.
What with Bruce Welch turning into a dapper silver fox, Bennet is the only one who actually looks his age. But he must be fit, given the way he hammers his drums.
The Shadows perform with a sleek, self-contained vigour that rolls back the years.
During their instrumental spots, they deliver hits like the gorgeous Wonderful Wonderful Land and Sleepwalk with Marvin’s melodic, expressive playing, perfect tone and distinctive whammy bar wobbles sounding as strange and mesmerising as ever.
The Shadows evoke an old fashioned modernity, like Thunderbirds puppets playing Fifties sci-fi music. They remind you what the future was supposed to be like. And then Cliff rejoins them and the spell is broken.
That he is the star of the occasion is in no doubt. Cliff has an easy charm and charisma, and (unlike all his vocal contemporaries) his pure clear singing tone doesn’t seem to have changed at all over the decades.
But the English Elvis was always a polite, Home Counties rocker. His style already sounded out of date by the time the regional accents and raw energy of The Beatles reconfigured everything. His stage persona really belongs to his television variety show, and his most loyal fans were those for whom the Sixties already felt like another harsher world.
Fifty years on, he gives his audience exactly what they want: melodic, cheesy, comforting, singalong nostalgia. If this was your era, it is undoubtedly a fantastic show. For the less committed, after all these years, you might seek some extra resonance. But even at 68, Cliff Richard sings The Young Ones without irony or poignancy.
No matter how many times he tells his audience “we may not be the young ones very long”, it is impossible to believe that he, or they, really think this is ever going to end. Tags : presse britannique Cliff Richard classe purete charisme cocoheinen articles
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